Grace

I spent labour day weekend climbing Mt. Katahdin in Maine with F, his daughter and her boyfriend.


It was a really good mountain, and the four of us made an easy little team, despite the cold virus we lobbed around the car like a wobbly balloon. On the hike, I was unbelievably ungraceful -- twisted my ankle, fell on my ass once, hobbled over on my twisted ankle as I passed someone who had stood aside to let us go ahead and grabbed at his.. paunch... for balance. But the mishaps were minor and there was real flow to the time -- about 8 hours up and down, 10.5 miles covered, about 4200 feet of ascent/descent.

Meeting J completed the collection of F's constellation of family that started when I met her brother my birthday weekend in February in Manhattan, but which really amplified this summer. I also met her mother (F's first significant ex), which made the grand total four exes, four offspring and two parents.

Seeing your Significant Other in so many contexts really fills out dimensions that can only be hinted at through stories. Ken Gergen talks about the concept of the "inner others" that we're always in dialogue with in any present conversation -- the actual people of our pasts, the discourses we're engaged with. Meeting the people who represent some of F's "inner others" is like being handed a pack of coloured filters for stage lighting -- the shadings are so much brighter, multi-variate, explanatory. I imagine it's the same thing for me when F sees me with my family, with A.

Meeting J really struck a chord with the "inner other" of my dad. Always present, watching J's relationship with F is like stowing away in some alternate universe. Rose and the doctor in the London where her father hadn't died. J is the same age as I was when my dad died -- who was 3 years younger than F is now. It's comforting, somehow, watching F and J engage with each other in the way that my best imagination would have had written for me and Tony, if he hadn't been ill, if my 20s had been less carved over by identity angst and my inability to just be confident in who I was -- with myself, with him.

J has a rare kind of grace. She's the kind of person that I learn things about myself from just by watching how she is in the world. And watching F with her is a little twist of bitterly dark chocolate, a rich rush of intense savour that slows down the tongue. Possibilities unmet, constantly unfurled new strands of life.